


Lena 2.0

by Coldest_Day



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dubious Science, F/F, Friendship, Kara Danvers Doesn't Know that Lena Luthor Knows, Lena Luthor Knows Kara Danvers Is Supergirl, Nanobots, Solar Flares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 13:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22940125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coldest_Day/pseuds/Coldest_Day
Summary: Lena heard it first. The ungodly, distant screech of an alien smashing its way closer to National City. With a wary glance at Kara she got up from her desk to search for the commotion through the vast windows of her office.She turned back to the blonde sitting on the couch with a pizza box, waiting for her to run out with a weak excuse and reappear on the news in red and blue.//With Supergirl powerless National City needs a temporary protector. Lena risks their friendship to step up.
Relationships: Kara Danvers & Lena Luthor
Comments: 1
Kudos: 44





	Lena 2.0

Lena heard it first. The ungodly, distant screech of an alien smashing its way closer to National City. With a wary glance at Kara, she got up from her desk to search for the commotion through the vast windows of her office. 

She turned back to the blonde sitting on the couch with a pizza box, waiting for her to run out with a weak excuse and reappear on the news in red and blue. 

She was confused when the reporter still had yet to move. In fact, Kara had yet to give any indication that she knew anything was wrong. She strode over to face the television and casually turned on the news, finally alerting Supergirl to the crisis.  
A crinkle appeared on the reporter's forehead and she scratched her ear before growing visibly frustrated. 

"The, as of yet unidentified alien, is carving a violent path towards National City. The Girl is Steel has yet to make an appearance at the scene to stop the creature, though military action seems to be underway. Everyone is advised to stay indoors and..."

The newscaster droned on as Kara was finally startled into action. Picking up her things, she started to thank Lena for lunch and make her excuse to leave. 

That's when Lena remembered. The day before National City's hero had blown out her powers in a solar flare while battling a different foe. The blonde's delayed reaction told the CEO all she needed to know. Supergirl was still powerless and out of commission, letting her friend leave now would be sending her to her death. 

"Are you crazy? They just said to stay indoors. That alien is headed into the city, I'm not letting you leave now!" The brunette moved to halt Kara's exit.

"I have to go. Follow the story, and all," the reporter feebly argued, "I have to do _something_!"

"No, you don't. Kara, you're human, going out there right now, without Supergirl, is a death wish." Lena hoped her words came across as she silently pleaded her best friend not to go out with her powers. "Look," she pointed to the figures in black on the screen, "there's a team on the ground working to subdue it, you can't help them right now." Just as she said it, three of the agents were swatted away like rag dolls and both women visibly flinched. 

Kara selfishly hoped that they weren't agents she was close to and prayed to Rao that none of them was her sister. "I don't know what I can do like this, but I certainly can't do anything here. Lena, I have to go!"

"No!" She was surprised to hear both Lena and her sister's protest as her comm crackled to life. 

"Stay wherever you are and do not go over there! That's an order Supergirl, you're still recovering!" 

Lena heard Alex over the hidden earpiece and knew Kara was pleading to both of them when she cried out, "People are getting hurt, even dying! I can't just sit here."

"You can, and you will!" Alex responded, "If you don't sit this one out, you won't be around to save anyone in the future."  
Lena saw that Kara still wanted to argue, but the brunette had made up her mind. She walked behind her desk and pulled a remote off of the underside before walking out onto the balcony while Kara was distracted. 

"I'm sorry." She said simply, grabbing the blonde's attention. 

Kara stepped to the balcony door only to find it locked. She shot a confused look to the woman who stood outside. "What are you doing out there? Lena?" She grew nervous seeing the CEO inch closer to the ledge and look off into the distance. 

"I'm so sorry Kara." She repeated forlornly. 

"Why? What are you doing? Why are you saying that... like it's goodbye?" That realization halted the blonde's panic as all she could do was meet Lena's bright green eyes, shimmering with tears and pride. 

The brunette held up the remote and pressed the button, watching as the room was encased in sheets of industrial steel. She heard banging and screaming from inside as Kara let out her frustration confirming that the Kryptonian was not fit to take on this attacker. 

She smiled slightly knowing she was doing the right thing, despite sacrificing her friendship with the hero. 

She closed her eyes and focused on the blonde's appearance as the city's hero, feeling her skin tingle as nano-bots shifted her cells and changed her physicality. She gave a quick glance to her reflection in the glass, now seeing blue eyes and wavy blonde hair replacing her natural emerald eyes and raven black locks. She lightly touched her forehead and the bots mimicked her friend's scar before she turned to leap from the balcony. 

It took a second for her to get comfortable in the air as she picked up speed, heading towards the distant screeching.  
She turned a corner around a high rise and nearly flew into a billboard. Startled, she tried to feel what was wrong before internally chastising herself for forgetting the hero's distinctive red cape. Again she felt to bots shift to weave a heavy fabric protruding from her shoulders, then shot off to the city limits. 

When the alien came into sight, she intercepted the comm signal between the Danvers sisters, feeling the bots' duplicate fill her ear, she activated it and announced her impending arrival at the scene. 

"What? Supergirl, I specifically told you not to come!" The elder Danvers exclaimed. 

"Well too late. I'm fine Alex, all powered up and everything, I even flew here!" Lena replied in a voice that wasn't her own. 

She heard incoherent grumbles before Alex's voice clearly came through again acquiescing, "Fine, but be careful Supergirl, don't overdo it so soon."

"Will do," Lena promised cheerily as Kara would, before speeding up to the alien wreaking havoc. 

A millisecond before her first punch landed, Lena prayed that the bots would be able to withstand, or even convincingly mimic, a display of Kryptonian strength. Her fist connected with the creature's jaw and its head snapped back before zeroing in on the new opponent slightly dazed. She hoped that was a good sign as she swerved and dodged the alien's now uncoordinated movements in the air. 

Lena kept up a pattern of evading and punching, trying to find a weak spot in the being's tough skin while slowly leading it away from the city's border. This was taking longer than she anticipated and she could feel the bots overheating under her skin. She started to worry about how much longer she could keep up the charade. Between holding the appearance, distributing her central density to stay aloft, and providing inhuman force and shielding to her arms with every punch, they were working more than they were ever intended to. She tried to take great lungfuls of cold air, but the computers were processing too quickly. She needed to expel a great amount of heat, and fast.

Lena groaned as she came up with a really bad idea. She internally drew in the heat from her overworked hands and let the bots move it to her head, collecting right behind her eyes. She felt dizzy and sick as she let it build there before pushing it out of her eyes. Her vision was obscured in red and she hoped that it was a convincing imitation of Supergirl's laser heat vision.  
It hit the alien true, so she kept shooting it with heat, until it had dropped to its knees, or at least what she thought were knees, and the burning path through her body had dissipated. 

She saw the agents move in to detain the unconscious mass and was going to flee the scene before she got questioned, but suddenly exhaustion hit and she was falling out of the sky. The bots acted as a shell on the outer layer of her skin as she fell and lost consciousness, powering down in their last form.

Alex Danvers jumped out of the DEO vehicle that had taken her to the scene when Supergirl had appeared. She ran over to where the blue and red streak landed, immediately going to check what she thought were her little sister's vitals. 

She waited as she felt for a pulse and found it slow, too slow. 

She ordered some nearby agents to drop what they were doing and help her take Supergirl back to headquarters and onto a sun bed.

When Lena woke up, she froze. Not knowing her surroundings, she took a cautious look around to find that she was hooked up to a heart monitor and lying under strong UV lights. That explained her rejuvenated energy; the solar-powered nanobots had woken her when their battery stores were completely replenished and repaired; meaning that she had been out for at least two hours. She looked down at herself and realized that she was still in the super suit, and therefore still mimicking Kara. 

She got up carefully and used her senses to find a clear path to a balcony or open window. 

"Oh no! Don't even think about it, back under the lamps Kara."

She turned abruptly, startled by the appearance of Agent Danvers. Lena panicked, not knowing if she could pull off a convincing interaction with Kara's sister. Stuttering, she tried to cut it short and make her escape. "I- I'm fine Alex! Really! Look, flying and everything!" She hovered a bit in hopes that it would convince the older Danvers to let her go. 

Oh crap! She remembered the younger Danvers was still locked in her office. What was that name Kara always slipped up.. Ray?... Ron?

She realized the agent was trying to bargain more time stuck at the DEO, "One more hour, Kar, I still want to figure out how you got your powers back so quickly. It doesn't make sense, you needed another two days, at least! I mean-"

"Oh Rao!" She interrupted gauging Alex's reaction, hoping she got the Kryptonian god's name right. "I really have to go Alex! I left Lena locked in her office."

"What? Kara!" The agent called out in confusion, but the blonde had already disappeared. 

Lena flew back to her office as fast as she could, not wanting to leave Kara there any longer than necessary. She landed on the balcony less gracefully that she wanted to admit, realizing at the last second that her velocity would send her into the layers of bulletproof glass and metal, she shifted her trajectory to instead crash into the reinforced concrete of the balcony ledge. 

Groaning she got up and fished the remote out from the small pile of rubble. Thankfully it was still intact, as she pointed it to the window. 

She paused, seeing that the steel wall was being pried up about half a foot. She sighed taking it as a sign that Kara was regaining her powers and clicked the button to retract the metal. 

She saw her friend's shock as she was revealed on the other side of the glass and quickly moved inside to explain.  
As she passed the threshold of the balcony door she rolled out her shoulders, letting the nanobots return to normal maintenance processes, and returning her natural appearance. 

Kara's eyes went impossibly wider at seeing her doppelgänger turn into her best friend, her very human best friend, in a wave of pixilated silver emanating from a movement of her shoulders.

Lena took a step forward and Kara internally cringed as she instinctively took a step back.

"I can explain, Kara, please." Lena took a slower step forward with her hands out placatingly, relieved when the blonde didn't shift away from her. 

"Lena... how—what?" Kara breathed out, barely above a whisper and unable to decide what question to ask first. 

Lena's heightened hearing picked it up and the CEO tried to start answering any of the reporter's unspoken questions. "Do you remember Jack Spheer?" She took Kara's slight nod as a sign to continue. "Remember the nanobots he was taken over with, the ones that um... attacked you and... and killed him?" Again Kara gave a weak nod, not realizing that Lena hinted at knowing her identity. "I told you, I helped design them. We built them out of a garage in hopes of helping humanity, I had to leave before we succeeded because of Lex's imprisonment. Right before I found out I had to leave, I had a breakthrough, went straight back to the drawing board and made up half a million prototypes without telling him... without telling anyone."

The brunette struggled to reveal the next part and Kara tried to reassure her by chiming in, "You were trying to cure cancer." nothing but pride and admiration in her tone or gaze. 

Lena sighs heavily, knowing what her next words will reveal. "Yes, we were. But my motives were somewhat selfish, and when I finished my prototypes I was desperate and careless, so I tested them... on myself."

A crinkle appeared between two blue eyes as Kara pieced together what her friend was implying. "Lena... you have cancer? You're dying..." she whispered, not wanting to believe that she could lose her best friend to death that her abilities under a yellow sun couldn't prevent. 'Supergirl' had never felt so useless. 

"No," Lena hesitated to choose her words carefully, "I'm not dying, I don't have cancer... anymore. The bots did what they were programmed to, swarmed the infected cells, destroyed them, and replaced their functions, just like one's natural immune system, and then some."

"You did it then," Kara said in disbelief, "you cured cancer. They're going to have to give you a Nobel Prize for that."

"It wasn't that simple. I didn't have the time to work out all the kinks in the programming before I tested them. They didn't know where to stop. Before I realized what was happening, they had completely taken over as my immune system and had run out of bots to replace the cells they were destroying. I had to give them an upgrade providing them with autonomous creation. I rewrote their program to only destroy and replace damaged or cancerous cells, in case it came back, and to monitor vitals. They carried that out by multiplying to monitor my biological functions on a cellular, maybe even molecular level. They got into my brain and cleared up neural pathways, my senses heightened and I got precise control of their functions and direct relay of their readings."

"Like computer diagnostics..." Kara hummed, getting a grasp of what Lena was explaining. 

"Exactly, except that now my mind acts like an operating system. I can control my cells individually, change their alignment, density, temperature, hydration..."

"So they made it possible for you to imitate Supergirl by changing density and focussing heat." Kara interrupts. "But I saw you fall," she points to the television, still running the news which had moved on to a story about the opening of a new dog park, "purely dead weight, you must have been unconscious. How did you survive?"

Lena nods, "Of course there are fail-safes in the bots' programming, they adapted. Like a parasite, they run on my energy, if I eat or sleep..." she glances as the blonde, wondering how comfortable she is with the Super secret being blown open, "As well as solar power. They shut down in a sort of safety protocol, since I drained their battery stores, turning my skin impenetrable they all turned to the surface, looking to soak up any sunlight they could to recharge, the sun bed at the DEO did wonders." Kara still had yet to react to the brunette knowing her secret, so Lena kept going. "The bots keep my heart beating, keep oxygen circulating, disperse vitamins and minerals. They keep me alive at all costs. That's why it's not a cure, why I can't tell anyone. I don't even know if I can die anymore. If word got out that a Luthor had been looking for, let alone found, a way to achieve immortality- the consequences would be catastrophic. Between the people with wealth and power who would try to buy it, and the rest that would accuse me of trying to prolong my family's tyranny for eternity. I don't even know what it means for me! I mean, does this mean I'm just like my mother's cyborg crony or-"

Lena stopped her rambling as she felt Kara's hand on her arm, "It's okay Lena, you were keeping this huge secret all by yourself! Even I have a whole team of people supporting Supergirl, sorry about not telling you by the way, I couldn't imagine trying to blend in with no one to help, let alone with the media's spotlight. You're incredible Lena. I believe you, this was an accident born from the best of intentions, and wherever you want to go from here, I support you and I'll help in whatever way I can. And thank you, for covering for me as Supergirl today. You scared me to death, and never do it again! But you were right, I would have been no help today, I couldn't even break through your steel lining." She gives a weak chuckle as Lena breaks out into a full laugh. 

"I don't know if I'm ready to go out in the world as a superhero, I would definitely need a few upgrades, but if you ever need a day off from having the weight of the world on your shoulders, I'll be here." She says sincerely, biting her lip, meeting blue eyes with her own green. Everything seemed to freeze between them, both women listening to the other's breath and heartbeat struggle to stay calm. 

The moment was broken as the reporter came to a startling conclusion and suspiciously glared at the CEO, "Are you bulletproof? Is that why you keep holding press conferences, knowing that someone is going to blow it up or shoot at you?!"  
The brunette averted her gaze and looked down at their intertwined hands mumbling out a small "Maybe."

"Lena!" Kara exclaimed.

"Between knowing Supergirl was there and being pretty confident I would survive, do you really blame me for putting business before a potential flesh wound?" Lena asked sheepishly. 

"Yes! I admire you for taking on the task of redeeming your family's name, but I thought you were above this brave stupidity, making me worry about you every time you went up to a podium."

"You jump in front of guns and run headfirst into fires." Lena pointed out. 

"That's different!" The blonde tried to explain. 

"No, it's not. There's no bravery involved to blind your actions when bullets bounce off your skin like dust and flames just dance harmlessly around you. That's not bravery, it's doing the right thing. And that's what I do, I tell the world LCorp's achievements to spread word and touch more lives, it's not just about my family's name. My father and Lex built up the resources, I'm just bringing out their potential for good, just like you and Superman using your Kryptonian abilities to save people. My safety is inconsequential because my life is never at stake."

"You're still human, Lena."

"So are you, Kara, in every way that counts. The way you try so hard to do the right thing, and keep getting up to fight every time you're knocked down, the way you care so deeply for your sister and all your friends. But that doesn’t even matter, does it? You were ready to run out and face that alien today as plain old Kara Danvers because it was just the right thing to do. With or without the enhanced bots, I would be out talking to the press, hosting fundraisers, and turning this company away from my brother’s harmful and xenophobic policies. Even though it draws out everyone who doesn’t believe a Luthor is capable of having a heart, those who think that they would do the world a service by removing me from it, or who agree with Lex and call me a traitor to humanity, even my brother’s hitmen- if all the bots did was keep the cancer at bay, I wouldn’t change a single thing because I know that I’m helping people.”

“You’re incredible Lena. The world doesn’t deserve you. I don’t deserve having you as a friend. You risked everything to do my job today when you didn’t even know if you would survive. A job that I lied to you about countless times and tried to keep from you because I let other people tell me that it would keep you safe when I knew that it would just allow them to keep their prejudices about your family and continue distrusting you. I’m sorry.”

“You have no need to apologize Kara. Your friends have every right to their own opinions about me, and while I know that I shouldn’t have tried piecing together Supergirl’s identity, it gave me a sense of pride and confidence that the woman perceived as my mortal enemy was able to see the honesty in my intentions, that was enough for me, your trust and faith in me is enough Kara.”

“But it shouldn’t have to be Lena.”


End file.
